


And at Your Touch, I Burn

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Era, Dick Winters makes a lot of bad decisions, Episode: s01e01 Currahee, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Malaria, Mission Fic, Pining, Self-Doubt, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-21 23:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15568470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Summer 1943: While on manoeuvrers in Kentucky, Dick has to cope with a sudden change in command, learning to work without Nix in Easy Company, and growing worries about his health.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for h/c bingo square "fever / delirium." In terms of content, there's some illness, angst, nightmares and depression, but it doesn't get especially graphic.
> 
> My apologies to accuracy in history, military exercises, and the geography of the state of Kentucky. I tried.
> 
> Big thank you to Archive.org for all the period military documents, to that trip to Uganda (don't get malaria, boys and girls, it sucks), and to actonbell for reading it over. Oh look! This one stayed rated teen.

They lost Captain Sobel and First Sergeant Evans on the second day after the training drop out of Fort Sturgis.

"Well where in the world did they go?" Dick asked a hapless Corporal Toye.

Toye shook his head, and pointed vaguely into the brush to the south west. "I was standing picket, sir," he said. "They just said"—he made a circular gesture with his hands—"they said they were going to scout ahead, before we moved out, sir."

Dick sighed. E Company was going east, back up away from the river planes and into the foothills. "Well," he said, glancing at his watch. The company had been meant to head out twenty minutes ago. They were losing time. However, as much as he wanted to, he couldn't just declare his CO a casualty of war and leave him to die in a Kentucky swamp without at least trying to find him. He looked at Harris, who'd brought Toye to face the company XO's wrath; the platoon sergeant's face was a non-committal mask. Harris was too smart for this game; all the noncoms were. Sobel had taught them better than to voice an opinion within earshot of an officer. Dick sighed again, no help there. When he reflexively glanced to see what telling non-expression Nix was wearing, he remembered for the hundredth time on this exercise alone that his best friend had transferred to battalion staff. Dick had to make up his own mind.

For months now, Dick had wanted the chance to spread his wings, to see if he had the metal to command men in the field, and to do it without Sobel second guessing him and interfering with his every move. Now, he had what he'd thought he'd wanted, if only for the time it took to track down his wayward commanding officer. Dick nodded to himself. He ran though a mental inventory of who he figured was least likely to get lost in a swamp, and finally said, "Sergeant, I want you to pick out a squad, include Powers and Wynn, and scout out to the south west and see what you can find. If you don't come up with any sign of them in thirty minutes, head right back here."

Harris looked like he would be happier if they left Sobel and Evans half drowned in the mud, and Dick couldn't say he disagreed, but he still saluted and went to pick out the lucky men who would have to add an hour's slog onto an already torturous night. The afternoon heat had dissipated enough for the mosquitoes to change watch with blackflies, and Dick was had nearly been eaten alive already. The Army had sprayed, and some men were wearing shirts soaked in insecticide, but none of it seemed to help. Maybe the men who were moving would have better luck than those waiting.

"Who wants to lay odds that Toye murdered them and hid the bodies in the quicksand?" Welsh asked when Dick briefed the other platoon leaders.

"Not on Toye," Moore said. "Liebgott and Tipper maybe..."

"Enough," Dick snapped. He was in charge now whether he liked the circumstances or not, and if they had actually lost their CO, he would be the one who would have to guide the company through another three marches, evade contact with the "enemy" Blue Forces, and relieve the balance of Second Battalion, or Red Forces, holding a designated ridge. The ridge was fifty miles of mostly swamp away, and they were late getting started already. "Get the men ready," he told the officers. "We head out the second Harris gets back."

The others peeled off, but Welsh held back, watching Dick. The sun had dropped behind the trees already, casting their encampment into long, streaked shadows. "You figure they'll find him?" he asked.

"How far could they have gotten?" Dick asked, but the edge of worry crept into his thoughts. Toye had seen Sobel and Evans two hours ago, and if he hadn't actually dumped their bodies in a mire, he also hadn't been overeager to report the encounter either. They could easily be irrevocably lost by now, and just as easily be captured by Blue Force scouts, which could be tracking the back to Easy's position even now. Or was Dick just making excuses because he didn't like his CO and wanted to take command and see what this company could really do?

"Do you care?" Welsh asked, and if it hadn't been for the accent, Dick could almost have believed that Nix had asked him that. Dick realised that what he really wanted right now was for Nix to imply that he was stupid, and then to tell him to stop second guessing himself and go with his gut.

"I care about every man in this company," Dick said. Even the ones he didn't like.

Welsh grimaced, lip curling up just enough to show his gapped teeth. "Nixon wasn't kidding," he commented, but then he saluted and headed out to round up his platoon before Dick could ask him what that meant.

It was only later, when he was checking the pickets himself, that he remembered Nix's comment to Welsh about Dick having no flaws and no vices. Dick only wished that were true. If he really were the righteous man Nix described, he would be able to get through a single hour without thinking about his married best fiend in a ways that Nix could never forgive.

Nix was with battalion staff, and battalion staff was on the ridge fifty miles east, and Dick didn't want to think about how much he wanted to be there already. If he'd ever thought that spending less time in Nix's company would cool his ardour, these field exercises had certainly disproved that.

The pickets were all in place, the men keeping their eyes peeled for either Blue Force's troopers or their lost commander. They were in a good position if attacked. Dick had made sure they'd dug in for the day on high ground surrounded by waist-deep mire and decent sight lines on three sides. He studied the map, tracing the converging topographic lines as the land steepened to the east, and then traced the most obvious valley route with his fingertip. Sobel had indicated that was his planned route before the rest period, and hadn't listened to Dick when he said it would surely be ambushed. Dick had tried to convince him that if they added another five miles, and looped north and crossed to the next tributary, they could be well clear and up hill of any potential trouble. It wasn't a suggestion Sobel had considered, or would have been able to implement, but Dick still liked the look of it.

The day's plan fixed in his mind, Dick folded the map away, and went to check in with the men as they geared up for the night.

The sun had set completely by the time Harris returned, shaking his head and swearing. They'd picked up Sobel's boot tracks a couple times, they thought—or those of a Blue Force scout—but hadn't found hide nor hair of anything bigger than a possum.

Dick saw the other officers exchange glances but knew that they were out of time. He pitched his voice high enough to be heard by the officers, noncoms, and any trooper purposefully milling near the tarp that demarcated the company CP. "Captain Sobel and First Sergeant Evans are missing in action. I will be taking command of E Company until such time as they are located. Lieutenant Welsh will take over second platoon, and Sergeant Diel will stand in for Evans. We move out in five. See to your men."

Part of Dick expected that someone in the company would call Dick out for blatant opportunism, tell him that he hadn't looked hard enough, that he was just getting rid of an officer he hated, that this would be remembered and counted against him. Dick's chest tightened at the thought of Sink scowling and chewing him out for reckless negligence, or even insubordination, and for a moment he had trouble breathing.

Or maybe that was just the damn heat. Even with the sun down and the forest going dark, it was still as sickeningly hot as mid-day in a Lancaster August. Dick swatted at another mosquito, even though there wasn't much point trying to keep them off, and prayed for the strength to lead his men through the coming night.

They broke into squads and moved out in tactical columns, trying for as much stealth as over a hundred inexperienced woodsmen could manage in the dark. They'd have a quarter moon for the first part of the march, but that too would set in about four hours, and it only provided pallid light. Dick drifted up and down the columns, ghosting in and out of hushed conversations, reminding the men to maintain noise discipline where he had to, though the sergeants managed for the most part. They were good men, good soldiers. They could be great, Dick thought, if only someone would lead them. They didn't need their hands held, but they deserved to be able to look to their commanding officer and know they could rely on him to hold the course and look after them. Dick felt a stab of shame at the arrogance in the assumption that that leader should or even could be him, but the men were responding well to the change in command.

Everyone had started the night soaked through and bug eaten, and they were only more so now, but they kept moving, and the only grumbling was army standard gripes, and done quietly at that.

Dick spent the last few hours of the night hanging back with third platoon which was acting as rearguard. He was worried that he was getting dehydrated. He had a constant nagging headache behind his temples, and he felt more tired than he thought he should. Dick hadn't felt this worn down since the third day of the march to Atlanta the previous winter, and they weren't making half the time now, nor freezing. Dick finished his canteen. There was a clear stream on the map near where he planned to rest; they should be able to refill there. Some rest, and a bit more water, and Dick would be ready to go again.

Maybe it was just not having Nix dogging his steps that made these marches seem longer. Even with noise discipline in place, Dick was used to being able to meet Nix's eyes and share a silent moment of understanding. The way Nix smiled then—showing only a sliver of teeth but his eyes crinkling like he was just about to laugh—was like a balm on heated skin, a drink of cool water on a hot day.

Dick was going to have to get used to not having that. Nix had gone to Strayer for a private meeting, and three days later Strayer had found a previously non-existent slot for Nix as a staff officer, and that was it. Nix hadn't said a word to Dick before the promotion, and hadn't offered an explanation for it after, either. In the swirl of activity between Camp Mackall and Camp Sturgis, Dick had barely seen Nix before he'd given the briefing for this drop. Dick had tried to pretend that hadn't hurt as much as it had, but he suspected Nix had seen through him. That Nix still hadn't said anything just cut deeper.

So maybe that was it. Maybe Dick just needed to suck up and get used to the fact that if he was going to lead these men, he was going to have to do it without Lewis Nixon there to prop him up.

Easy took a short rest eat before first light, and made better time after that. Dick made himself pick up the pace, and spent the next few hours working his way forward and walking a while with each squad until he was up to the lead scouts. Every step dragged, and his wet gear felt three times as heavy as it should but he kept going.

"How's it looking, Harry?" he asked when he was in with the leading elements of second.

"Dry ground!" Welsh whispered back, near unrecognisable under the mud caking his face and uniform. "Hallelujah. I put us a quarter mile back. Was thinking we'd hold here and send a couple boys ahead to check it out."

Dick nodded. He was exhausted enough to feel the pull of temptation to just get to their camp. The sun was well over the ridges to the east, the bugs had fallen into a lull, and Dick wanted the march to end. However, what had looked like a good place to hole up to Dick wouldn't be invisible to Blue Forces either. They had the same maps.

Had he still been leading second platoon, he would have gone with the scouts. Now he sat on a log and waited for Welsh to come back. The men gathered in twos and threes as the rest of the company came up. They shared canteens and chocolate bars, and watched the shadowed woods wearily. Dick wanted to curl up in the moss and close his aching eyes. The headache had only gotten worse, and now his chest felt tight again. It felt good just to sit down. He ate part of a Hershey bar while he waited, licking the melted chocolate off his fingers.

He knew Welsh would be moving slowly and quietly, but it still seemed to take too long. He could feel the growing heat as the sun slanted through the woods and started to burn off the mist, and the soft calls of the mourning doves made everything feel sleepy. Dick checked his watch. It had only been twenty minutes. Welsh would need to clear the whole surrounding area. If Dick were commanding a company of Blue Forces, he would let his enemy relax and begin to settle in for the day, and then drop down like a bag of hammers before they'd gotten dug in. The Japanese had taken to doing that in the Pacific, and it was shockingly lethal.

Welsh was a good officer; he would be taking his time, making sure he wasn't leading his company into an ambush. Dick checked his watch again: forty minutes. He rubbed his eyes and stood. If he sat any longer, he really was going to nod off right in front of the majority of the company. He walked the perimeter of the muster point, talking quietly with the noncoms as he did. His throat felt scratchy, and he must have sounded pretty bad, because Lipton offered Dick the last swallow in his own canteen and a hard candy. Dick declined.

Dick was at the point of picking men to scout an alternate route when Welsh called the password. "There's a better spot half a mile up, sir," he said, by way of explanation. "Good water, our backs to a cliff."

"Good work," Dick said, and didn't groan at the idea of going even a little further. He told himself he would sleep better in the increased safety of the place Welsh had found, though right now he'd sleep like a log where he stood, so it wasn't much motivation. "Let's move out."

They were headed up a shallow grade, barely visible, but Dick could feel it in his thighs. His muscles ached from the day's march, feeling more like he'd just sprinted the last hundred yards up Currahee than that he'd just had a forty-minute rest. What was the matter with him? Dick put his head down and pushed on. He needed sleep, that was all.

Welsh had found a good spot, and Dick focused on the details of staying concealed while digging in for the day. When the noncoms had that well in hand, he went down to the stream that cut through the left side of the camp. It wasn't more than knee deep at the most, but it moved swiftly and looked clear. He broke an iodine tab into his canteen and waited for it to take effect. Dick wanted to stick his whole head in the stream and not take it out until the ache behind his eyes faded. He was soaked to the skin already, but felt flushed and hot even in the relatively cool morning air. The water helped. He swallowed the whole canteen down, and then refilled it.

"You think we really lost them?" Welsh asked kneeling to fill his own canteen.

Dick had gone the better part of an hour without thinking about Sobel and Evans, but he considered it now. "Can't see how we didn't," he said. "You think Captain Sobel could find his way up here?" Even if he knew that Dick had changed their planned route, Dick didn't add. The other officers didn't know the original plan, and he felt like a traitor for not telling them that he'd changed it.

Welsh snorted. "Congratulations on the new command," he said. His smile warmed his face, even under the mud, and Dick felt a pang of guilt.

They shouldn't be happy about leaving their commanding officer and senior noncom lost somewhere in a Kentucky swamp. It was a junior officer's duty to serve and facilitate his CO's wishes to the best of his ability, and Dick had failed in that. When he'd tried to tell his parents about Nix, they hadn't understood. They'd thought Dick's strange new friend—a rich boy from New Jersey and an Episcopalian to boot—would act as some kind of bad influence. Dick wondered what they'd say if he told them that in his first week without Nix, he'd participated in a sideways kind of mutiny that had effectively stolen an entire company of paratroopers. Telling himself that he hadn't planned it, and that it was for the good of the men didn't change that.

"We'll see what Sink says when we come back without them," was all Dick said. Welsh nodded sombrely. For all that he was new to the 506th, Welsh had immediately figured out that the real fire came from regiment, not battalion.

"You should get some shut eye, sir," Welsh told him as he stood. Dick knew he should get up too, but he couldn't seem to get his legs to co-operate. Harry stared down at him appraisingly. "You look like shit."

"Thanks, Nix." He said it reflexively, but when he heard was Welsh's high stuttering laugh and not Nix's sharp, almost surprised sounding chuckle, Dick blinked and looked up at Harry, feeling confused. "You're right," he said. "I don't know why I'm so tired."

"Could be that you've been back and forth down the line all night while worrying enough for twelve people," Welsh said. He offered Dick a hand up, and Dick took it and let himself be helped to his feet.

Dick wanted to find a shady corner and curl up for about twelve hours, but he made himself check in with the platoon commanders first and make sure the watches were set.

He'd been sitting by the stream all through chow and had forgotten to eat, he realised, but he didn't feel hungry. Honestly, the idea of opening another package of K-rations turned his stomach—more than it usually did, even. Dick decided that he could eat later in the day, once he'd rested. Someone had spread out his bedroll, and Dick barely took the time to get his boots off and spread his socks in the sun to dry before he crawled into it. He fell asleep in moments.

* * *

Dick had told Matheson to wake him at noon, and was surprised at how much just three hours of rest had refreshed him. The headache had faded to next to nothing, and his breathing felt a lot better too. He must have just overextended himself the day before, Dick decided. Too much stress, like Welsh had said. The K-rations hadn't gotten any more appealing, but Dick made himself finish every part of one, tossing the pack of smokes to Harris.

With the sentries set wide, the men could relax a for a few hours and smoke or talk quietly when they weren't sleeping. Dick watched them fondly. They were all tired to the bone, but Dick thought they looked lighter for not having Sobel and Evans prowling around the camp finding fault where there was none, and winding everyone up like a watch spring with their own obvious anxiety. The men didn't flinch when the lieutenants approached them, now, because they knew their company commander hadn't ordered their platoon leaders to invent infractions. It was as it should be, Dick thought: each trooper was focused on the task in front of him and nothing else.

Thinking of the last time they'd seen Sobel, Dick took a small squad out on patrol. He wanted to get moving again, to test his strength, but the odd lassitude of the day before really did seem to have faded. He was able to climb the low ridge easily without his lungs tightening and his breath dragging in and out of his chest.

"Look there," he said to Sergeant Martin. They lay on their bellies in the mid-morning sun, looking down into the valley that had been Sobel's planned route.

Martin didn't ask, just scanned the valley until he saw what Dick meant. The sun caught something bright, a gun barrel maybe, or a piece of glass. Once the eye had found that, it was easy to see the outlines of an encampment hiding under the same sort of trees same as E Company's was. Though set up in the shelter of the cliff—and Dick hoped dug in a little more deeply—Easy wouldn't be quite that simple to pick out. "Glad we didn't go that way, sir," Martin said.

"Too close," Dick said. He felt like a teenager tiptoeing down the hallway trying to keep his kid sister from following him out on the town—one creaky floorboard, and an afternoon's plans would be sunk. All Blue Force would have to do is send some scouts over the ridge and up the stream, and they'd walk right into Easy's camp. Dick wanted to move, but they'd be even more visible now that it was daylight. Anything they did would have to be done slowly and carefully, with no charging into fixed positions. "We're ready to go in three hours," he said. "Until then, I want the men quiet as church mice, understood?"

"Yes, sir," Martin agreed.

Strangely, Dick felt more out of breath going down hill than up. The heaviness was returning to his limbs, and he felt the pressure building behind his eyes again. They'd been mostly marching at night, and Dick didn't know how he could have gotten too much sun, but it felt like the sun stroke he'd gotten as a child after spending all day at the creek without a hat. He drank another canteen of water and walked the pickets.

His orders had gone out, and the only sounds were the cooing of doves and distant cries of birds Dick didn't recognise. The creek splashed down a small cascade just below the camp, and Dick gave in and went and stuck his head under it. It felt like paradise achieved, and he had to remember not to wash himself clean of the boot black marking his face. He ached to shave.

Dick decided he could afford a few more hours of sleep. It would be a long march: over the ridge while they still had daylight for the difficult terrain, and then back down though the twisting valley and snarled woods of central Kentucky.

As he sat in the shade and sipped his canteen, Dick thought about the Battle of Shiloh, which had taken place eighty years ago and nearly two hundred miles due south. Whole armies had missed each other in the scrub and fog, then come together by accident, clashed, and lost each other again. When the guns had fallen silent, over twenty thousand casualties littered the ground and limped or were carried off the battlefield. Three thousand men dead in two days of fighting. Dick had read about all those battles, but never imagined that someday he would take part in one. He wondered if, when it came to it, he would hold the line no matter what the cost like U.S. Grant, or freeze and cower in the face of carnage like Joe Hooker.

Dick liked to think that he would have the nerve for real battle—as he was sure that Sobel would not—but he knew that a man's true metal could only be tested under fire. Nix would tell him he was overthinking it, and that both battle and battle training had changed since the Civil War, but Nix wasn't here. All Dick could do was train the men and himself until, when the time came and he was put the the test, he could not falter.

His head had started to well and truly ache again, and he closed his eyes and forced his body to relax until he drifted off, sitting surrounded by the murmur of the wind in the trees and men's voices pitched low.

Two hours later, they broke camp and headed out, crawling low through the brush and hoping that they would not blunder into the Army of Mississippi in the confusion.

* * *

By the time Easy paused to rest and eat that evening, Dick was beginning to wonder if there was something actually wrong with him. As he'd marched that day, the headache had built to a near blinding intensity, and his lungs were tightening closed again. He struggled for breath on the inclines, and couldn't seem to get cool. Every muscle in his body ached, like he'd had the flu for a week, but he hadn't been sick since that head cold in January.

Dick sat with his back to a tree and rubbed his arms. He was hot and cold at the same time, somehow, and he knew that he couldn't possibly eat. He drank some water and nibbled at a Hershey bar, but ignored his K-rations. Whatever it was, as long as it didn't get any worse in the next twenty-four hours, he would be fine. They could make another ten miles in the moonlight, and then camp down for a few hours. A mid-morning push would put them on at the rendezvous point, fighting fresh.

Dick closed his eyes and shook his head hard, trying to shake the fog out of his brain. He needed to pull himself together. If this was Easy's one chance to shine without the Black Swan chained to their ankles, then their temporary commander couldn't afford to crap out because he was sick. Dick pushed himself to his feet, and had to hang onto a branch for a moment as a wave of dizziness swept over him.

He saw Welsh giving him a concerned look, and nodded back to him, as though he were fine. He let go of the tree and stepped away. The headache remained, but he didn't feel unsteady any more. Welsh looked away. Dick needed to be more careful. The last thing the men needed was to worry that their second commander on a single field exercise was about to vanish into the mud. Even if lying down in cool water and sleeping forever sounded like heaven.

For once, Dick's wish that Nix was still in E Company didn't come purely from selfishness. Dick needed a sound second opinion of what to do. He considered asking Welsh, but was afraid that he would insist that Dick step out of the exercise. He knew that any unit could radio for an evacuation at any time if it got in over its head. Dick also knew that almost every field commander in the airborne would seriously consider drinking hemlock before he made that call.

Dick would just have to hold it together for the next day, there was nothing else for it. He shouldered his field pack again and started forward. Perspiration immediately stood out on his brow, but it was hot still, and Dick didn't think anyone would notice.

By sunset, the company was making its way through muddy ground along the edge of a small lake. They'd crossed a road a few miles back, and now kept running into small cabins but suspiciously few locals. One of the boys said something about moonshine, and Dick made a note to talk to the noncoms about ensuring that potential wood alcohol and parched troopers did not have a chance to test each other. The thought drifted out of his head, and Dick realised that mental notes weren't going to cut it. He went and found Diel and told him before he forgot again. That was another thing he needed Nix for, to keep track of the details.

Dick dropped back beside Welsh who was holding rearguard with second platoon, and drew him a little away. "I think I'm coming down with something," he murmured. "Flu maybe."

Welsh looked Dick up and down, and though he couldn't possibly have seen much of Dick's face in the moonlight, he nodded. "Yeah, been wondering what was up. You've had lead in your pants all night, sir," he said.

That was a surprisingly accurate description, save that Dick felt as though he were made of lead entirely, if lead could ache. "It won't be official, but I'm making you my XO," Dick told him. They were speaking as softly as they could, but it still sounded loud against the muffled footsteps of the men and the occasional call of a night bird.

"What do you need?" Harry asked. He didn't even hesitate, and he certainly didn't suggest that Dick should radio for a pick up. Dick could have wept at the relief of it.

Dick offered him a half smile, knowing he wouldn't see it in the dark, and tried to put the gratitude in his voice too. "Just, uh, prop me up if I fall over, would you?" he asked.

Harry made an ambivalent noise. "Don't know if I'm tall enough."

"I'm confident your service in this regard will be exemplary," Dick told him, and smiled when Welsh laughed. "I also need you to double check that I'm not ordering a forward march off a cliff," he said more seriously.

"Do you think that's likely?" Welsh asked. He didn't sound concerned that it was, just interested in what Dick's answer would be.

"No," Dick said. Surely it wasn't. He was just tired. Maybe he did have the flu. "Just in case."

"Are you telling Matheson and Moore?" Welsh asked.

"Soon," Dick said.

"Okay, gotcha," Welsh said, though he didn't entirely sound like he did.

"Thank you," Dick said. He picked up his pace, forcing back the exhaustion and blinking past the fatigue until he was in the lead elements with third. There, he fell into step with Moore but didn't say anything more than a greeting.

Why had he talked to Welsh and not the other platoon leaders? In truth, Dick couldn't pin down a rational explanation. Maybe it was that he was so practised at maintaining his mask in front of his peers. They'd all survived Sobel together, so far at least, but the cost had been a peculiar reserve between the junior officers. It wasn't quite coolness, but it was an awareness that at any moment they could be turned against each other, and have their words challenged and twisted into a knife. Nix and Dick had come as a set, and Nix hadn't seemed to care anyway—at least until he'd up and transferred out without a word to Dick—but they'd always kept Matheson and Moore at arm's length. Maybe it was just that Welsh's devil may care edge reminded Dick a little of Nix's smugness, even if his hard scrabble practicality didn't. Maybe Welsh just hadn't been in Sobel's sights long enough to get a feel for the danger and his openness appealed to Dick. Maybe Dick just liked Welsh.

It would be good to have a friend again, Dick thought, even if he wasn't in love with this one. Probably especially if he wasn't in love with Harry Welsh. He'd always had to be so careful around Nix, always making sure never to let him know what Dick truly felt, always measuring his their closeness against what was acceptable between buddies. Always watching Nix and wondering if maybe he saw a glimmer of the same in his eyes, or if Dick had just fallen victim to seeing what he wanted to.

Dick knew that he had to be imagining it. He and Nix were close friends, sure, most of the men had buddies like that, but Nix was married, and had never shown any sexual interest in other men.

Not like Dick had. Dick had always known there was something strange in him, but hadn't fully understood what it was until he'd read Greek classics at college. He'd seen himself in them for the first time, and had found other boys who did as well. Dick had never really gone very far with that knowledge—some awkward petting at most—but knowing that there was a history to what he was, and that it was an honourable one, even if only among the Pagan Greeks, made his mind rest a little more easily. Since then, he'd usually been able to meet a man's eye and hold his gaze for a little too long, or mention a password, and he would know, or at least be pretty sure, that like was seeing like.

The thing about Nix, however, was that he'd always held Dick's gaze in a way that made Dick sure there was something to it, but had either never picked up on any of the dropped hairpins, or had seen them and pretended he didn't. Dick wasn't sure which was worse, but he'd never had the guts to outright confess himself to Nix. It was little wonder that he was unsure if his courage would hold up under fire. He'd already shown himself a coward in so many ways.

It occurred Dick for the first time that Nix might have seen through to what Dick was, and that was why he'd transferred out. It could be that he couldn't stand to be near Dick any more. He could be afraid of him.

A stick snapped under his boot, and Dick blinked. He'd been wool gathering, walking with the others as though he were part of a flock of sheep. He was feeling dizzy again, and his vision swam. Perspiration ran down his face, dripping from his eyebrows and flowing down his neck to soak his shirt. The moon was just setting, a red half-circle to their backs, so it had to be about midnight. Dick had no idea where they were.

"Position?" he asked Moore, and they paused to consult a map. Dick's head cleared a little under the cover of the rain jacket, but the flashlight made his headache worse. The map's lines blurred and then crystallised into something that made sense. Moore pointed with his finger, tracing the line they'd taken, and Dick nodded, and tapped the rise upstream from the lake. Another few hours at this pace, and they could rest there.

"Are you alright, sir?" Moore asked as he folded the map.

Dick hesitated, but he wasn't Sobel. He wouldn't try to paper over his weaknesses at the expense of his men. "Might have the flu," he answered. "I'm fine for now, but..." he didn't know what the rest of that was. By seniority, Matheson would take over, but Dick could tell from Moore's silence that neither of them liked how it would look if E Company limped in having lost two commanding officers in three days.

"All right," was all Moore said, and Dick let him go on while he stayed where he was until he got back to second platoon. He watched all the men pass, noting how they moved in the dark and the tone of their murmured exchanges. He thought he loved every single trooper in the company, no matter how much of a foul-mouthed, dirty-minded S.O.B. he was. Dick couldn't let them down, not now.

Welsh didn't ask how he was, but fell into step beside Dick as they moved forward. Again Easy stopped to send scouts into the camp, and again it seemed to take an age for them to come back.

By the time they had established camp, the valley had turned purple and gold with the sunrise. It swam in front of Dick's eyes no matter how hard he blinked. He drank two canteens of water to try and clear his head, but couldn't possibly eat. They'd been walking for almost sixteen hours, and he knew he needed fuel, but his stomach refused.

He'd told Matheson as well, and now asked to be allowed to sleep the whole rest period. He felt like a heel for asking for six hours of sleep when the rest of the men had to take watches, but he'd felt so much better after sleep the day before. Matheson nodded, but a medic showed up a few minutes later, obviously on orders.

"Heard you weren't feeling well, sir," he said, not quite meeting Dick's eyes.

Dick nodded jerkily. The shame of admitting that his body was failing him lessened a bit by it being just Gene Roe. "Fatigue, sore muscles, can't seem to breathe. It comes and goes, but I have a heck of a headache," he admitted. "Think it's the flu, Doc? Or bad water?" He'd been so careful about using iodine, but he'd heard that didn't always work.

"Bad air, sir," Roe said.

"Huh?" That didn't make sense to Dick. Some kind of swamp gas?

"They used to call it that, before they knew," Roe said, not really explaining anything. Dick had always had trouble pinning the boy down. "You have malaria, Lieutenant Winters. Looks like you're about two days into the fever."

"For crying out loud," Dick muttered. Of course that's what it was. He hadn't considered it because the symptoms had faded with rest, and he'd been so convinced it was just too much sun and fatigue. Most of the army areas had been safe—well sprayed down with insecticide, which didn't seem to make there be any fewer mosquitoes, but somehow made the ones there were not carry sickness. "Will I be able to make camp?" Dick asked.

From Roe's carefully blank expression, Dick didn't think the answer was going to be a positive one.

"Lieutenant Winters!" Ranney was coming up fast, and Dick turned away from Roe and his personal problems, alarmed by the intensity in the sergeant's low voice.

"Yes?"

Ranney saluted, sliding into his explanation before his hand even dropped. "Sir, we have Blue Force contact to the south. Maybe ten men. Four hundred yards up slope of OP2. I don't think they know we're here yet, sir, but they're headed straight in."

A squad scouting in the first light. Dick wondered where the rest of their company was. "Take two squads from third and encircle them, then let them run them right into the OP. Get a second MG in place there. Do it fast and quiet." 

Moore had followed Ranney up and was nodding along. Dick wanted to go with them and observe, but Roe was still watching him with that closed, quiet expression that suggested that if Dick moved, it might be his medical duty to shoot him.

Again Dick waited. If there was a single part of being in command that he hated—censoring mail aside—it was this waiting. Moore would go out as platoon leader, and Dick could justify it as a company commander, if they were moving the whole company, but he couldn't be in the line of fire all the time, and he especially couldn't when he didn't know if he could stand. He wished he could send Nix to find out what was going on. He trusted his men. He worried what would happen if the situation changed rapidly. Just thinking about standing up made him feel dizzy.

Roe held out his canteen, and Dick took it without thinking. He got one swallow down and almost spat it out, but Roe wanted him to drink it so he tipped it back and drained the whole thing. "What was that?" he asked when it was gone.

"Lemonade powder," Roe said. "You need sugar. You should try to eat." He held out a package of K-rations, and Dick tried not to blanch.

The water had felt good despite the taste, but his head was spinning so hard he thought he'd throw up if he ate one of those canned meat dishes. He pulled out the chocolate bar and nibbled at the edge of it.

"Permission to speak, sir," Roe said.

"Go ahead, Doc," Dick said.

"If you don't get to a field hospital soon, sir, you may fall into a coma," he said, and Dick could tell he was struggling to find words that would make enough of an impact to be heeded. "Back home in Louisiana, it hits kids the hardest, but grown men die from malaria every year."

"How soon?" Dick asked. He hadn't had a chance to feel afraid, not since Ranney had come up, but now he felt dread snake into his gut. Had he just been colossally stupid?

Roe shook his head, unwilling to commit. "She comes and goes," he said. "Hard to pin down, especially in the heat. A day, maybe two."

The space between a day and two days could make all the difference in this exercise. Dick wished he knew which it would be, and how much of a gamble he was making. He hadn't realised that his stubbornness and pride could actually kill him this time.

"Sir!" Moore and Ranney were back, looking immensely pleased with themselves. A lieutenant with a Screaming Eagle patch and a blue arm band trailed behind them—looking less pleased—and a major with a white arm band brought up the rear. Dick hadn't seen him before, but knew he must be one of the exercise controllers.

"We've taken twelve prisoners, sir," Moore said.

Dick grabbed onto a tree branch and pulled himself up. He managed not to waver, but it was a near thing. His chest felt like it had steel hoops cinching down around it. "Good work," he said. He saluted the major. "Are you joining us now, sir?"

The major was, and Dick had to summarise events from lift off from Camp Sturgis through the drop, the first day and losing Sobel, pointing out their route on the map and Dick's thinking behind it. There had been a handful of minor injuries, but no contact with Blue Force until now.

As he replayed events, Dick saw that Blue Force had likely worked out that they'd missed Easy and were now following up the valley parallel to them, hoping to cut them off. Their missing patrol would only confirm the suspected location of Red Force troopers.

Dick looked at the map again. The rest of the Second Battalion was only ten miles up the valley. Dick had meant to rest the men before closing the gap, but he didn't have much choice now. If they camped here, they'd have Blue Forces on their necks within the hour. From Moore's expression, he knew it too. "Get the men ready," Dick said. "We move out in ten minutes. First platoon in the lead, then second, then third."

"Sir," Roe said, but Dick shook his head at him. The difference between one day or two it wouldn't matter now. They had to go forward. If Dick fell flat on his face, they could leave him as a prisoner. Roe muttered something Dick couldn't make out and handed him another canteen full of iodine-flavoured lemonade mix.

"Are you all right, son?" the major asked.

"Malaria," Dick answered, loud enough for Moore and Ranney to hear. The men needed to know now, he thought, in case he actually did pass out. "I'll get treated once we meet up with Battalion."

The major didn't look like he approved of the idea, but it wasn't a controller's place to tell participating commanders how to behave. He was only there to ladle out the consequences.

The sun had cleared the ridge by the time they moved out, and it was in their eyes all the way up. Dick hoped it blinded Blue Force to their location, but didn't count on that kind of luck. The men sacrificed silence for speed now, moving at quick time all alongside the creek and then taking the slope at a scramble. Dick thought of all those runs up Currahee, some at night after a twelve mile march. It was serving them well now.

Dick had focus all his willpower on staying upright. His head was swimming so badly that he couldn't see some of the time, and it felt like every heartbeat sent a railroad spike through his temples. Roe was sticking to him like glue, and kept telling him to drink.

"You need to take command," Dick told Matheson, half an hour in, and he thought Matheson nodded, but he didn't say anything.

By the time they got to the ridge line, the rearguard reported a whole battalion of Blue Forces coming up the valley behind them. The company from before must have joined up with its sister units. Well, they'd be in for a surprise. Dick hadn't planned it, but Easy was leading them right into Second's stronghold. Or it would be if Dog and Fox had gotten into place like they were supposed to. Nix was with them, he would make sure they had.

Nix was ahead. If Dick could make it a few more miles, he would see him. He hated using that as an incentive, but focusing on seeing Nix again was better than thinking about how much every muscle in his body blazed with pain, and how difficult it was to breathe.

"Not much further," Welsh said. Dick hadn't even noticed him dropping into step on his left hand side, bookending Roe.

Dick nodded, not replying. He didn't have the breath to answer. Perspiration had soaked through all his clothes, and dripped into his eyes, stinging them. "How much of a gap?" he panted.

Harry glanced back, though he wouldn't be able to see Blue Force's lead elements through the woods. "Figure about a mile."

It was going to be close. "They gaining?" Dick considered just sitting down where he was and letting them catch him. It would be one prisoner in exchange for a company. The second it seemed like he was slowing Easy down, he would.

"We're going to beat the pants off them, sir," Welsh said. Dick just hoped it was true. He tripped on a root, and Welsh and Roe moved as one to slide up under his arms, taking most of his weight as they kept him from falling on his face.

"You don't—" Dick started to say, whereupon Harry told him to shut up and keep marching.

They didn't quite carry him the last two miles, but Dick's feet missed the ground more than once as Roe and Harry dragged him forward. He held onto their shoulders and tried to keep his legs moving.

Dick was in the middle of the company, just ahead of the prisoners, and he could feel the men's eyes on him, and the eyes of the controller. They were all watching him, seeing how weak he was. Judging him for insisting on staying in command as long as he had. Judging him for losing his real CO in the first place. Maybe it would be better if he had fallen into a coma. Dick tried to tell Harry this, but didn't have the breath. His mouth felt dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The ground levelled under them, and Dick felt the sun beating off his helmet, then blessed shade. He heard Strayer's voice, and Sink's, and blinked hard, pulling the world back into focus. He shrugged out of Harry and Roe's hold and stood upright to salute.

"Easy Company reporting, sir," he said. "We have three companies of..."

Sink cut him off. He knew already, of course. Matheson would have reported to him right away, before they'd hauled Dick in to what must be the battalion CP. Or was the whole Regiment there? "Winters?" Sink was asking. He sounded worried.

Dick wavered on his feet; chills wrecked his body, and he couldn't think way to tell Sink. There was something important. There must be if he was in the CP. He should say something about losing Sobel.

"Dick?" That was Nix's voice. Nix was here.

"Lew?" Dick asked, trying to turn towards the voice. The tent wavered in front of him, and then pitched sideways. No, it was Dick who'd pitched over, but that was okay. Nix had caught him.

"What the hell happened to you?" Nix demanded, his breath cool on Dick's cheek as he held Dick half propped upright. His arms wrapped around Dick's shoulders, and his hands rubbed Dick's back. Dick was shaking so hard his teeth rattled, and he couldn't breathe.

Dick wanted to tell Nix something too, but his head hurt too much, and he passed out instead.


	2. Chapter 2

Dick's head hadn't stopped hurting when he drifted back into consciousness, but he was lying down, and someone had stripped him out of his filthy, sweat-drenched uniform and put him in a hospital gown. He blinked, but couldn't get the world to come into focus. All he could see was a blur of olive drab. He tried to ask where he was but his throat was too dry. When he moved his arm, it hurt, a sharp stabbing pain on top of the general ache. Dick pawed at the place with his other hand, but strong fingers curled around his wrist.

"Shhhhh, you're okay, leave it alone," Nix said, voice too loud even though he was trying to sound soothing. Dick turned towards him anyway, but all he could see was a pale blur of face topped with a dark blur of hair. "You landed yourself in the field hospital. The doc's giving you medicine."

It was an IV needle. Dick should have known that. He couldn't seem to think. He licked his lips. Whatever they were giving him, wasn't making his head hurt any less, but it was fogging his brain. Or maybe that was the malaria. He managed to work up enough spit to ask, "What?" His voice sounded as though he'd swallowed broken glass, which was about how his throat felt anyway.

Instead of answering, Nix vanished for a moment, and Dick struggled to think of a way to make him come back. Had he messed up badly enough that even his best friend of the past year was tired of him? Collapsing in front of both Strayer and Sink couldn't have looked good. Nix probably didn't appreciate being fainted on in public. Dick closed his eyes. That helped with the headache, a little, but just made it obvious how much it hurt to breathe.

He felt a cool cloth on his forehead, and then a hand under the back of his neck, lifting his head a little while a glass touched his lips. "You've been out for a day and a half," Nix said. He pulled the glass away before Dick could do more than wet his mouth. "Scared the hell out of me. The doc said you could have water when you woke up, but not much."

Dick swirled the water around his mouth and had to work to swallow. He wanted to ask what had happened, but couldn't get words to string together in his head. He wanted another sip of water, but more importantly, he wanted Nix to never let go of his neck. His touch felt like a balm, and if Dick hadn't already embarrassed himself so badly, he would have cried. "Lew?" he asked, hating how pitiful he sounded.

Nix gave him another small sip, which was why Dick loved him, he decided. "You're going to be okay, Dick," Nix told him. "Everyone's packing up for Fort Bragg, but we're stuck here until you're on your feet again."

That didn't make a whole lot of sense to Dick. He got why he wasn't going back—he couldn't even lift his head—but what was the matter with Nix? He sounded all right.

"Here comes the doc," Nix warned, and his hand pulled away. "I better get out of his way."

Dick then had to submit to being poked, prodded and berated for stupidity, which he took in what he hoped was stoic silence. He was, apparently, the worst case the doctor had seen in two years at Camp Breckinridge, and if this was the kind of foolery parachute infantry got up to, the doctor didn't see how they were going to do the Allies any good whatsoever. The fact that Dick had gotten a special mention from the controller, was only going to lead to more idiocy in this line, and the doctor would not be held accountable.

It was the first Dick had heard of being written up for a commendation, and he thought vaguely that he'd probably feel pretty pleased about that later. Then he passed out again.

He dreamed wildly and vividly events of the past days. He kept marching though the dark, but sometimes it was the swamps of Kentucky, and sometimes the fields near Dick's grandmother's house. He was alone, and with his men, and with Nix. Every turn he made, he ran into men with blue armbands holding rifles levelled at his chest. Sometimes Dick held his hands up and they fired anyway, sometimes he tried to run and they shot him down. When Nix was with him, Dick would try to stand in front of him, to shelter Nix with his body, but it never worked, and Nix's chest or face would explode into a gory mess as the bullets found him. Dick would struggle into the next dream knowing that he'd failed to save the man he loved, the best friend who was only there at all because he'd followed Dick into the airborne. Sometimes he knew that he was dreaming, but he could never wake. Sometimes he thought he'd be trapped in the dreams forever.

When Dick finally woke, his head was pounding, and he couldn't seem to breathe at all. He sucked in one gasp of muggy air after another, but none of them felt like enough. He started to panic, eyes wide, not seeing anything except the same blur of green. Had he somehow damaged his eyes? They couldn't mark him 4F over this, could they? Not after all he'd been through.

"Hey, hey, hey, easy there, soldier." Nix's voice again, and then his hand spread flat on Dick's chest. "Deep breaths. You're okay."

"Can't see," Dick gasped, but that wasn't true. He blinked harder, clearing the dots swimming in his eyes, and the high ceiling of the camp's hospital came into focus. He turned towards Nix, and he was there too, frowning down at Dick, his hand still on Dick's chest.

"There you go," Nix said. He patted Dick's chest lightly and didn't pull away.

Dick took one slow breath after another until his heart rate dropped a little, and he felt less like he was spinning apart. The brightness of the ward made his head hurt, and he closed his eyes. Even then—even with Nix there and touching him—Dick felt as though he would crumble at the slightest shock. The memory of his dreams tugged at him, and he was having trouble sorting out the real march from the imagined ones. He licked his lips and asked, "What happened?"

"I think you had some kind of nightmare?" Nix said. "Those drugs they're pumping into you are something else, I guess."

Was that all just the drugs? Dick hoped so. The alternative was that he was losing his mind. "What happened before?" he clarified. He remembered waking up, and Nix saying something about everyone else leaving, and the doctor being angry, but no details.

"You mean other than you getting malaria and almost dying in front of half of battalion staff?" Nix asked. Dick opened one eye enough to glare at him. "Okay, okay. After Easy showed up, we pretty well pasted an entire battalion of Blue Force. Second got a commendation from Division. Sink and Strayer are pleased as punch. Now everyone's gone on furlough, pretty well. We're at Camp Breckinridge." 

Dick felt the rim of the water glass on his lips again, and took a tiny sip. "Sobel turn up?" he asked.

Sobel had, Nix told him sourly. Their CO had indeed wandered straight into a Blue Force patrol, some miles from Easy's camp, but because his path had been so confused, and because the one thing Sobel did not lack was pure cussedness, that hadn't in any way given away Easy's position. Sobel had spent the next few days as a simulated P.O.W. and was spitting tacks about it. Dick would have been at the top of Sobel's hit list, if he hadn't managed to land himself in the hospital.

Dick tried to nod, then froze as the movement split his head. He pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to rub away the pain, but it went too deep, and even just lifting his arms made his heart pound and his breath short. He couldn't believe that he was missing whole days. At least Sobel and Evans had turned up. He couldn't say he was glad that Sobel was again gunning for him, but he was happy to hear his choice hadn't left his CO dead in a swamp. Although the fact that Nix was still touching him, and that all of this was related in Nix's best sardonic tone, was doing a lot of Dick's good will towards the situation. "I should get sick more often," he said, not really thinking until the words came out.

"It won't save you," Nix snapped with more heat than Dick thought necessary. He didn't seem to realise that Dick meant the attention he was getting now, not the attention he was avoiding from Sobel. Dick opened his eyes again, and confirmed that Nix did indeed look like he was angry at Dick.

"When can I go?" Dick asked. He felt too exposed in the hospital, even if the ward was mostly deserted. He wanted to lick his wounds in peace.

Nix laughed at him. Dick would have minded if the sound hadn't been so welcome. "Not any time soon," he said.

Dick sighed lifted his head enough to flop it back against the pillow in frustration; the satisfaction in the display of petulance wasn't worth how much it hurt. He hated that he was sick, and Sobel was on the warpath, and his men were exposed, and Nix was on battalion staff and would probably leave soon. Either the medicine or the illness were making Dick childish, because the last one struck him the deepest. "Sorry," he said, not even sure what he was apologising for.

"You're a sorry son of a bitch right now, that's for sure," Nix said, but whatever had caused the moment of anger had passed, and now he sounded so completely fond of Dick that Dick wanted to kiss him then and there. He pulled his hand away from Dick's chest and ruffled Dick's hair. "Want to try sitting up?"

Dick did, but just lifting his head had made the pain behind his eyes start up again, and he thought sitting would make him vomit. "Later," he muttered.

"All right," Nix agreed, and tipped a little more water into Dick's mouth. It was tepid, over-chlorinated army camp water, and nothing had ever tasted sweeter. "Doc says if you can swallow, he can switch you to pills and real food, well, hospital food."

"Great," Dick muttered. It wasn't that Dick wanted Nix to leave. This was the longest he'd seen him at a stretch since he'd transferred up to staff, but he also hated being this fragile in front of him. His heart was still fluttering and he felt oddly close to tears, even though he had no real reason to be upset. "When do you ship out?" he asked.

Nix shrugged. "Oh, I'm not going anywhere for a bit. Thought I'd stick around, see the sights, maybe head back to Bragg when they spring you."

Which meant that Lewis Nixon III was probably the only man in history to voluntarily take a liberty at Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky. Dick shoved down the small spike of satisfaction at that, that Nix was here with him, not back back in North Carolina with his wife. That was unworthy of him to even think that, when Nix was being so kind all of a sudden. Dick told himself that it didn't really mean anything anyway. It might be unusual for a buddy to have stayed like this, but it had been a dramatic situation. It sounded like Dick had come close to dying in Nix's arms; of course he'd been worried. It wasn't a statement of any intent, and Dick shouldn't be glad that Nix was ignoring Kathy anyway. Maybe Dick didn't understand what they saw in each other—the obvious aside—but he shouldn't want his best friend to ignore solemn vows sworn before God. Dick was just lucky he didn't seem to have said any of this when he was weak and delirious. If Nix ever figured out what a sad sack Dick was, he'd be gone in seconds.

Dick wasn't tired, but he said, "Sorry, I need to sack out again," and let his eyes drift shut.

"Sure thing," Nix said. "I'll come back later."

Only after Nix had left did it occur to Dick that Nix had already been by Dick's cot both times he'd woken up. How long had he been sitting by Dick's side?

He caught a nurse and asked her what day it was. Dick had been flat out for forty eight hours, it turned out.

With the nurse's help, he was able to sit up a bit, but it did indeed make his head pound and nausea almost choke him, so he lay down again right away. Dick closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he couldn't seem to stay still. It hurt every time he moved, but his heartrate wouldn't settle down, and he felt like he'd downed two pots of coffee. He ended up lying on his back staring at the ceiling, wishing he hadn't sent Nix away.

* * *

Nix wandered back in after dinner. Dick had his IV out by then, and was sitting up a little. He'd tried to read, but couldn't get his eyes to focus, so lay with his hands folded over a two-month old copy of _Time_. The ceiling hadn't gotten any more interesting since he'd woken up.

"Oh, you're awake," Nix said. He slurred his Rs enough to let Dick know that he'd sourced some local hooch, but he wasn't outright drunk. He slumped down into the chair next to the cot, and stole Dick's magazine. "Learn anything?" he asked, paging through it without pausing to read.

"Can't focus," Dick admitted. "Can't sleep, either. Those pills are something else."

Nix made a sympathetic sound, and flipped back to the start of the issue. "Want to hear it?" he said.

Dick knew he should say no, but he couldn't send Nix away again, not when he'd spent the last five hours alone, missing him every second. "Okay," he said, "if you want."

"Oh, you'll like this one, it's about farming," Lew said, and Dick didn't bother trying to tell him, again, that he wasn't from a farm and had never worked on one. "'Wheat, of all things, is no longer a surplus commodity in the U.S. Last week Franklin Roosevelt underlined this fact by...'" Dick didn't pay much attention to two-month-old trade news, but let the sound of Nix's voice roll over him. Nix had a good reading voice, low and steady, but with expression where it needed to be. It was the kind of voice men listened to. He could have been a professor, Dick thought, if he'd ever tried at school. Just listening seemed to make Dick's body ache less, and he closed his eyes and let himself pretend they were relaxing together on a liberty somewhere. Nix kept reading, finishing that article and moving onto the next, and then the next, until he'd read the whole magazine cover to cover, even the letters section. 

It took a few minutes after Nix had closed the magazine for Dick to realise that he'd stopped talking. He blinked, and pulled himself back to the moment: the nearly abandoned hospital on the a training camp caught in a moment between rotations. A bored nurse sat by the entrance reading a novel, and Nix sitting right beside Dick, on foot hooked on the bed frame, a magazine neither of them cared about spread across his raised knee. Dick met Nix's eyes, and their gazes held for a moment too long, and he wondered if this was it, this was when he would find out for good or ill if those looks meant something other than friendship. Dick wet his lips, trying to work out how to ask.

"The nurse'll kick me out soon," Nix said, looking down at the magazine. "I'll see you tomorrow, huh?"

"Sure," Dick said. He didn't think the nurse cared one way or another, as long as they stayed quiet and let her read her book. This was probably the first down time she'd had all month. It was clearly an excuse to break the tension building between them, but even then Nix hadn't completely pulled free of it.

"Try get some sleep," he said, and bent down so close that for a moment Dick thought Nix was going to kiss him, but he just ruffled Dick's hair and then stood and turned away.

Dick sighed and closed his eyes, then opened them when Nix's steps faded. The weird mix of hyperactivity, fatigue, anxiety and boredom still jittered through him. It was only about 1930, but Dick knew already that he wouldn't sleep at all that night.

He gave Nix another few minutes to get back to the barracks, or more likely the canteen, and called for the nurse to help him up. His head felt like it was going to ring right off his shoulders and crack like the Liberty Bell, but he set his teeth and forced his body to move anyway. He knew that if he sat still for one more minute, he'd vibrate himself to pieces.

Dick only needed a little help to get into the showers, even if he had to sit in a chair once he got there. The nurse said not to worry about the water, they had the whole ward's supply between the two of them, so Dick sat under the scalding jets for half an hour, scrubbing away a week's worth of perspiration and grime. He shaved after, doing his best to keep his hand steady as he worked. He might have missed a few spots, but being clean again made him feel like a new man. He put on pyjamas instead of his gown when he was done, and felt even better.

After, he walked up and down the ward, forcing his legs forward like he had on the march. Even a ten yards back and forth on flat ground made his heart pound and his breath come in gasps, but at least Dick was moving. The nurse watched him without comment for a few minutes, and then threatened to put Dick in restraints if he didn't go to bed like a sensible patient.

Dick didn't sleep right away this time, either, but the activity had made lying in bed feel less like a provocation to try to crawl out of his own skin. The nurse turned off most of the lights, and Dick closed his eyes. His brain was still running in a thousand directions at once: from what had happened on the exercise, to what was happening in Bragg, to Sink to Sobel to Strayer, and always back to Nix and the puzzle of why he'd stayed. He felt like a convict on a wheel, trudging around and around, and never getting anywhere. There was a line from Lewis Carroll about that, but Dick couldn't remember it exactly, something about running and running and always staying in the same place. Dick should read that again, or read something. He hadn't had time to read for pleasure since his last furlough. He supposed he did now, but of course he couldn't focus on words. He flipped through the magazine in the dark—thinking how Nix had held it and read it to him—and then stuffed it under his pillow. He needed to stop thinking, he needed a focus point. Dick tried to steady his thoughts by focusing on a mundane and detailed task: organising footlocker. He considered each item, the condition it had been last he'd seen it, if it needed to be mended or replaced, and where it sat in the tray. When he had run through them all, he started picturing how to disassemble and clean an MG55. At some point, in the middle of zeroing the sights, Dick drifted into a shallow, restless sleep.

He wouldn't have even been sure that he slept at all, save that he did dream. In the dream, he was at Shiloh and back in the time of the Civil War, walking though the battlefields with General Grant. They moved silently, pausing to look at the bodies of ruined men that littered the muddy ground. They were Union and Confederate alike, sometimes lying with their fellows, sometimes locked together in a last deadly embrace.

As they walked through the swirling mist, their boots squelching in the mud, Grant stopped and pointed. He stood dark and silent as the spectre in _A Christmas Carol_ , and Dick followed his hand to see a swatch of mud-smeared olive drab amid the blue and grey. He crouched to turn the head, feeling for dog tags, and saw that it was Harry Welsh, half his face blown away, eyes wide and staring. Dick fumbled at the dog tags, taking far too long to work them free. The edges dug into his clenched fist.

When Dick rose again, Grant was gone, and Dick stood alone in the field of the dead. As he looked around him, he saw that he'd been mistaken earlier. The dead weren't Yankees and Rebs; they were all paratroopers; they were Dick's men. Every last one. The whole of Easy Company lay spread out dead around him. He walked through the carnage, collecting dog tags until they felt too heavy to carry. He needed to make sure they were all there. He knew they were all dead, but he had to confirm it for their families.

As Dick walked, he found other soldiers he'd known mixed in with the boys from Easy: friends from Camp Croft and Fort Benning, and finally—lying face down in a clear stream that had swirled red with blood— Lewis Nixon. Dick knew it was him before he even turned him over, knew the shape of his back, and the tumble of his hair. Nix didn't look like he was dead. His face was still and pale, but Dick didn't see any wound. He could have been sleeping, for all Dick could tell. He knelt next to Nix's shoulder, soaking his knees in the mud, and pressed his fingers to Nix's neck. Was there a pulse? He couldn't tell. Dick felt sure that if he did the right thing, if he took the correct course of action, that he could reverse this one death.

He bent over Nix and leaned down to kiss his cold lips. Their mouths met, and Nix stirred under Dick's hands. Only when Nix's eyes opened, did Dick know in his heart that Nix was dead, and that everything had gone terribly wrong.

Dick woke with a shout, making the nurse start and scream, which was enough to tip Dick out of the cot and onto the floor in a tangle of sheets.

The shock of hitting the floor shook him completely out of the dream, and the nurse's hands were warm on his arms as she helped him straighten himself out and get back into bed. She gave him his pills, since he was up anyway, and threw in an extra aspirin for his headache.

He was glad he was wearing pants, even if the nurse had already seen it, and even more glad that she was willing to leave him alone after that. Dick curled on his side and tried not to think of the dream, but it stuck to his thoughts like pine tar, especially the certainty that all his men were dead, and the coldness of Nix's lips under his. The images left him disconsolate and full of dread. He wasn't from a church that believed in prophetic dreams, but this one felt too weighted and significant to ignore. Would this be Dick's fate when they got to Europe or the the Pacific: to survive as every man he served with died around him? Would it be Dick's fate to get even Nix killed?

It was just a dream. Dick told himself it was just the pills making him loopy, or the malaria lingering in his blood causing hallucinations, but the dread didn't leave him, and he didn't sleep again that night.

* * *

Nix came in the next morning, shockingly early for him, carrying a cardboard carton and a spoon. "The doc said you weren't eating," he said.

"I've been eating," he said. Not a whole hell of a lot, but he had. The pills he kept taking to cure the malaria certainly weren't restoring his interest in food. Though frankly it would take a lot for Dick to feel interested in the slop the camp hospital served.

"Great, you can eat this too then," Nix said, not put off. His false cheer just made Dick feel more tired and put out by not having slept, but Dick didn't bother fighting about it. When Nix held out the carton, Dick took it without comment. It was waxed and beaded with condensation, and Dick traced his fingers though it before unfolding the lid. It was chocolate ice cream, a little soupy from the heat but not melted yet.

"Where'd you get this?" Dick asked. It sure didn't look like anything that had come out of a U.S. Army mess. He poked it with the spoon, scooping away the soupy top layer to reveal the smooth texture of of the frozen cream underneath.

"Town," Nix said. That was miles away, and he must have packed it back on ice, before noon, even. "So, are you going to eat that, or just poke it until it melts?"

"Right," Dick said. He swirled another patten with his spoon, but this time picked up enough to swallow. It tasted as good as it looked: rich, creamy, bittersweet. He swallowed, and then set the spoon down again. The ice cream was good, but he wasn't sure he really wanted it either. Nix was watching him though, eyes narrowed, so he took another bite. The coolness felt good on his tongue, and soothed his throat when he swallowed. He wasn't sure why he wasn't wolfing it down; it really did taste better than anything he'd eaten in weeks, if not months. He held the spoon up to Nix. "You want some?"

"Sure." Nix leaned down and closed his mouth around the spoon, drawing back slowly to suck off every trace of ice cream. He slurped a little when he got to the end of it, and Dick had to look away for a second. It was impossible to see Nix do that and not to think of his mouth on other things. "Thanks," Nix said, and smiled at Dick.

"No problem," Dick answered, but he couldn't stop staring at Nix's lips. There was a bead of chocolate on the lower left corner of his mouth, and Dick wanted to kiss it off. As he watched, Nix ran his tongue along his lower lip in such a slow, sultry way that if he'd been any other man in the world, Dick would have been sure it was a come on. He turned back to his carton of ice cream. The warmth of his hand had mostly melted it, and he tipped the box to pool it in the corners so he could scoop it up. "Thanks, Lew," he said when he was finished. "Better than anything they serve around here."

"Figured it was," Lew he set the box aside, but didn't get up. Instead he just leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. "When they letting you out?"

Dick shrugged. "Next few days, maybe," he said. "I guess I was the worst case they've had in a while, so the Doc wants to keep an eye on me." Dick had gotten the impression that his presence here was a punishment or maybe an object lesson, rather than a concern.

"You've got to stop trying to be the top of every class," Nix said, smiling lopsidedly at Dick. Something in the crinkle of his eyes looked strained and insincere. "Winning jumpmaster on the first flight is one thing, but excelling at tropical diseases is carrying your dedication to excellence too far."

"I'll keep that in mind," Dick said and smiled back, but the humour felt hollow too. "Anyway, I'm doing better now. You should head out, get back to Bragg before Kathy skins you." Nix should spend what could be his last liberty with his wife, and not with an army buddy he hadn't talked to in weeks and no longer served with anyway.

Nix folded his arms and glanced sideways at Dick. "Yeah," he said, drawing the word out. "I think that ship has sailed."

Dick could imagine. "Well, go back and make it up to her. You have a week left on your leave, take her somewhere nice, up to Asheville or something. She could meet you there." Dick pictured the train connections in his head. It wouldn't take much, and the happy couple could be on liberty in the cool air of the Appalachians. Dick really had no idea why Nix had stuck around as long as he had. If it had just been concern for Dick's health, he could have left the day before when Dick woke up. For that matter, he could have left instructions for Dick to telegram and say how he was.

"Sure," Nix said, but he didn't get up.

He looked unhappy, and Dick wished there were something he could say to fix things for his best friend, and wished that he wasn't secretly happy that Nix and Kathy seemed to be on the rocks yet again. It was pure spite to want to deny everyone something Dick wanted but couldn't have himself. He should want Nix to be happy. He did wanted Nix to be happy. He just wasn't able to get over wishing it was with him. At some point, Nix was going to look at Dick long enough and see right through to flaws and vices, and then he would turn away in disgust.

"Look, Nix." Dick pushed himself up on his elbow and swung his feet around so that he was properly sitting up, not just resting on a pillow. His head still rang at the least movement and his muscles ached, but he was getting better at ignoring the pain. "There's no point both of us being stuck in Kentucky. I'm fine. You go on, get out of here. See your wife. Heck, go back to New Jersey, if you want. Something. I don't know why you bothered to stay in the first place."

Nix's mouth twitched down and then his face smoothed into the blank expression he wore in front of hostile officers. For the space of a heartbeat, Dick hated him for wearing that mask in front of Dick. He never had before. They'd never had secrets, right from the start. Then the feeling passed, and Dick realised what a hypocrite he was for even thinking that for a second. He was the one with secrets, and he'd held them close and nurtured them for more than a year. He should tell Nix now, just rip away all the masks and show him what he really was, and then Nix would go, and it would be done. Surely that would be easier? They could move on then; Dick could move on.

"You should go," Dick said again. "There's nothing here for you."

"That's what you want?" Nix asked. He was staring at Dick, trying to see through him, but he couldn't. Dick had too many walls up now, and Nix wasn't looking for the right thing.

Still, Dick couldn't answer with the truth, and he couldn't lie either. He felt a hundred dark emotions knotting together in his chest, and all he knew was that he needed Nix to leave before he worked out how to see them, or before the boiled and boiled and shattered Dick wide open from the pressure inside. He nodded, keeping his eyes focused on his knees so that he wouldn't have to see the hurt in Nix's eyes. Or worse yet, the lack of hurt. Nix had already left Easy; it wouldn't be hard for him to cut ties entirely, and leave Dick to rot.

"Fine," Nix said. The chair creaked, and he got up. His boots crossed the edge of Dick's vision, then they vanished as well. "See you around, then."

"Sure," Dick said, but he didn't look up. He stayed fixed to the spot until Nix's footsteps faded from the room. "Sure," he said again, to himself. "See you around."

Physically, Dick felt stronger, and he knew he should get up and walk the ward a few times. He needed to build his strength up and show the doctor that he was fit for duty again. He pushed at the edges of the bed, and stood up, but couldn't find the will to even try at PT. The black dog that had been nipping at his heels seemed to have curled up on his chest, and now the malaria had nothing to do with why he couldn't breathe.

Dick stood for a moment, wavering and then sat down on the cot. He didn't see the point of trying to get better, not when he still felt this rotten after days and days. Every part of his body still hurt, and he didn't have the strength to push any more. Maybe he would try later, when he'd rested a little more. Instead of working to get back to his men, like he knew that he had to, Dick lay down on the cot again and curled in on himself like a child. The one small spark of satisfaction he felt was that he had gotten Nix to leave. He didn't want anyone to see him like this, not even the nurse.

He didn't know if it would matter, anyway. Dick had surrendered his command in the middle of an action, and then Harry had already had to literally drag him for miles. Every one of the men had seen him falter and crumble, and to top it off he'd babbled and then fainted in front of both Strayer and Sink. He already knew that Sobel was going to make his life living hell for leaving him in enemy hands, and for daring to take over his precious company, and for altering Sobel's planned marches, and Dick didn't want to face months more of that man's petty aggressions and degradations. The idea of the public humiliation Sobel was doubtless cooking up for Dick seemed too much to bear just then. He'd always had Nix with him before, making cracks or even just standing there and silently supporting him, and even without Nix, Dick had had the silent solidarity of the men, who were at least united in hating their CO. Now he wasn't sure of that either. How could Dick ask for the the men's respect when Dick now understood how weak he really was, and knew that they would see that in him too, if they hadn't already. Dick would falter in the face of real fire, he knew he would. He wasn't a brave man, and he wouldn't be able to lead his men like they deserved. They were putting their hopes in him, and he would turn into just another Sobel.

That was if he got the chance. It was quite possible that Sink would reward his performance in the battalion CP by taking his wings and drumming Dick out into regular infantry. Dick had seen how other troopers had had their airborne patches ripped off and been made to unblouse their pants and take off their jump boots while the whole battalion looked on in silent judgement. That had been for showing up late from a liberty, Dick couldn't imagine what Sink would do as consequence for stealing a company, failing to lead it, and then falling to pieces in front of the men. Dick hadn't even shaved.

What had Matheson and Moore's reports been like? Or Harry's? Dick didn't want to think about what they might have said about his performance, but it was better than thinking about Nix.

Nix. Dick's thoughts ran back around to where they started, except darker this time, and after that, they spiralled down, and down, and down, until finally, late in the day, Dick slept.

He dreamed again of General Grant, but this time they were at the Battle of the Crater, and Dick kept ordering his troops to rush forward into the killing zone while Grant called him a fool and screamed at him to stop.

When he woke, Dick felt strangely hollow, like a barracks bag that had been emptied but still held its shape. The previous day's despair had passed, but no other emotions replaced them, not even hunger or want. Dick looked at the empty chair beside the bed and realised that he hadn't seen Nix in twenty-four hours. Nix must actually have gone back to Fort Bragg without Dick.

"Good," Dick said, trying to fill the word with a conviction he didn't feel.

He could go forward now. Nix was gone; Nix would always be gone. The friendship had burned like a meteor for fifteen months, and now only ashes remained. That too was for the best, for Nix especially. He could go patch things up with Kathy, and then settle down to moving forward with his career, while Dick tried to salvage his.

When the nurse came, Dick swallowed his pills and started in on the slop they called breakfast without complaint. It still tasted like cardboard, but he had to show that he could eat it. One of the orderlies had cleared the ice cream container away at some point in the night. Dick was glad that he didn't have to look at it any more. Dick didn't need the distractions. He needed to get back on track and try to see what he needed to do in order to get back to his men. Whatever Sink and Sobel were going to do to Dick wouldn't be ameliorated by Dick hiding out in Kentucky letting them stew over it. 

Dick swung out of his bed and went to the latrine. His head still split every time he moved, but he felt stronger on his feet. He showered and shaved, and went to track down the doctor to apply for his release. He could surely take his pills just as easily on the train or at Bragg.

"I've got the entire 106th Infantry Division rolling in in six hours," the doctor said. "Sooner you're out of here the better. Take your friend too."

"Sir?" Dick said. What friend?

The doctor looked up from his his desk for the first time, but that was only to shove a note for the nurse at him. "Lieutenant Nixon, he keeps moping around like a kicked dog. Take him with you. That's an order."

"Yes, sir," Dick said, though he didn't think medical corps could order the deployment of paratroopers on leave. "Where would I find him?"

The doctor just shrugged, and turned to the next file. Wherever Nix was, he clearly didn't think it was his problem.

Dick's barracks bag was with the quartermaster, who expressed the same view as the doctor about wanting to see the back of the 101st before the 106th arrived. Dick changed into a fresh uniform and went to look for Nix.

The quartermaster had said to try the junior officer's billets, as the canteen wasn't open, which only went to show that he'd met Nix.

Why Nix was still there at all continued to baffle Dick. He'd very much seemed to leave the morning before, and Dick had certainly been enough of an S.O.B. to give Nix no reason to stay, or to talk to Dick again if he didn't have to. Dick had repaid days of attentive care by snarling at his best friend like a cornered wolf, and the worst of it was that he'd done it deliberately, intending to hurt. Nix should have told Dick to get stuffed and stomped off. Maybe he had. It could just be that there hadn't been a train to catch the day before, and Nix was planning to leave today anyway. If that were the case, Dick didn't expect that he would be a welcome sight, especially not before noon. Still, Dick had to find out one way or another, and it was better to do it now.

By the time Dick hauled his bag all the way down to the billets—which were of course at the opposite side of the camp—he was feeling dizzy and short of breath. He had to lean against a wall and rest for a minute before he started hunting through empty billets. With the camp almost deserted, it didn't take long to find a closed door, and behind it Nix sleeping alone in a billet meant for four.

Dick leaned in the doorway and watched him for a moment. They'd bunked together more often than not before Nix had transferred and Dick had always enjoyed the mornings when he'd woken early and had a few minutes to lie awake and just look at Nix without risk of being understood. Nix as always slept half on his stomach with his face buried in his pillow, and his arms curled up in front of him. Dick could see his back rise and fall with each steady breath, and his face was smooth and untroubled. It was a sin how much Dick wanted to strip down to his skivvies and crawl into the cot behind Nix, to slide his hands over his body and learn what sounds he made when touched.

Instead of doing any of that, he clapped his hands and called Nix's name sharply. Nix moaned, stirred, and took five minutes to wake up enough to blink up at Dick and say, "Hey, you're up."

"Yeah, I'm up," Dick said. "You should be too. We're shipping back to Bragg."

Nix swung his feet off the cot and scrubbed his hands through his hair, making it stand on end. "There's a daily at 1245," he said.

"There's a train in half an hour," Dick corrected. He didn't want to spend minute more than he had to in Kentucky. He kept worrying that if the doctor saw him milling around the camp, he'd change his mind and confine Dick for further observation. Dick couldn't handle waiting any more. He needed to get back to the 506th and find out how bad the damage was.

Nix laughed at him. "You're welcome to take it," he said. "I'm going to have some breakfast and a pot of coffee first. You should eat too."

"I've already eaten," Dick snapped, bristling at being mothered. If there was a train every afternoon, why hadn't Nix taken it yesterday? Why was Dick being such a bastard all of a sudden?

"Right." Nix stood and dug through his barracks bag until he found his flask and his garrison cap. "Keep me company then."

Apparently nothing Dick could say was going to dislodge Nix, and trying made Dick's stomach twist, so he just said, "Sure," and let Nix have his own way. Dick watched him dress, admiring the way the jacket of his service uniform fit across his shoulders and his belt cinched at the waist. Nix was a few inches shorter than Dick, but he had a broader, fuller frame that always made Dick want to wrap his arms around his waist and press his face against his neck. "I thought you left yesterday," he said as Nix pomaded his hair back and tucked his cap into his belt.

"Nope." Instead of heading out into the corridor, Nix hooked the edge of the door with his foot and yanked it closed. His knee brushed Dick's thigh, but Dick didn't think Nix noticed. He turned to Dick and said, "I just figured you wanted to be left alone to wallow in your funk. Doc said those pills would turn Jesus Christ himself into a moody son of a bitch, and there wasn't any trying to talk someone out of it. So..."

"Oh," Dick said. He hadn't considered that. His emotions of the day before felt distant and a little blurred, but he remembered their intensity at the time. How could they just have been the pills? "I thought you'd left," he said again. He'd spent a whole day sure that he'd finally chased Nix off, and that Dick had had it coming.

"Nope, still here." Nix spread his hands to encompass the glories of Camp Breckinridge.

"I don't understand."

Nix sighed and leaned back against the upper bunk. "No, I guess you wouldn't," he said, he sounded tired, suddenly, and Dick wondered how much sleep he'd gotten since Dick had collapsed. It seemed as though Nix had spent an awful lot of time sitting at Dick's bedside. Dick really didn't understand, not any of it. Nix looked him up and down before his gaze settled on Dick's face. "Kathy told me to figure out if... well she used language not fit for your tender ears, but the the short version was that she found out about a certain young lady in Georgia. She made it pretty clear that if I didn't make some kind of effort, she was going to file for divorce."

Nix pulled a face as though his marriage was a troublesome detail and he didn't really care one way or another. Maybe he didn't. Kathy hadn't been wrong about Nix seeing a girl in Toccoa, even if it hadn't been more than sex, or so he'd said. Dick wasn't sure how you could just have sex with someone and not really care about them, but then he'd never had sex at all. He also realised that was one of the many reasons that some the troopers thought he was a starched shirt.

"I'm sorry," Dick said carefully, trying to judge the ground before he stepped in something. "I guess that, uh, that she didn't think you staying here counted as an effort?"

"Oh, she thought it counted for something," Nix said. "Did you know that you can send profanity through Western Union? I thought that wasn't allowed."

"You were the one saying that I shouldn't try to excel at everything," Dick said, impressed. "When you hit the rocks, you do it at full steam."

Nix made the same face at him as he made when Strayer did something obnoxious, and for a moment everything was okay again. More than okay: Nix was very likely getting divorced, which meant that Dick could continue to pine with a pilot light of hope carefully sheltered. Dick really did despise himself sometimes. He should say he was sorry about Nix's marriage, but he couldn't get the words out, and they would both know it was a lie.

"Can we not talk about that?" Nix asked.

"Do you want to talk about something else?" Dick asked. The door was still closed, and Nix was still leaning against the bunks like he wasn't planning to move any time soon.

Nix sighed. "I guess I should tell you what happened when Easy showed up, before you get a chance to compare notes with Welsh."

Dick felt his shoulders come up defensively, and lifted his chin. This one had the feeling of something that was going to hurt. "You said I passed out and went to the field hospital." He'd been feverish, not thinking straight. What had he done? Had he said something damning in front of Colonel Sink?

"Yeah, well," Nix jammed his hands in his pockets, and stared out the narrow window. "We'd set up on that ridge since the evening before, and spent all night bringing the guns up. I have scouts out but we haven't run into any of Blue Forces by mid morning. Strayer's getting antsy, and Sink's dropped in to hold his hand. We're just talking about sending a probe down into the southern valley when, a couple of the boys on picket show up with Matheson, who's run up ahead of the E Company, flat out sprinted the last half mile. I couldn't have done it on my best day. Matheson briefs the colonel; Sink starts smiling like Christmas has come early, and even Strayer knows how to deploy so Blue Force'll run smack into a pincer. Somewhere in there, the rest of Easy shows up, and Sink asks where Sobel is. MIA for two days, says Matheson, and he's in command now. Well then where's Winters? Before Salve can say anything, Welsh shows up, half dragging your carcass into the CP, saying that you insisted on briefing the colonel."

"Oh for Pete's sake," Dick muttered. He could imagine what that must have looked like. "I don't remember saying that."

Nix snorted. "Yeah, that's probably for the best," he said, but went on anyway. Dick wondered what the point was. Was this a warning about the trouble he was going to hit when they got back to Bragg? If so, it seemed like a round about way of giving it to him. "You're a stammering mess; that medic of yours is insisting that you go to the field hospital yesterday, or you'll die; Welsh and Matheson are trying to explain; Sink and Strayer are demanding that they do explain. In the middle of all that, I say something, I don't remember what, and you turn to me like"—Nix whips his head around to look at Dick, eyes wide and startled, starting right at Dick like he was salvation unlooked for—"and say my name like, like it's a prayer or something. It sent chills down my spine. Everything sort of stopped for a second, and then you wavered and fell over."

"That I do remember," Dick said. "You caught me." His hands had been cool and he'd held Dick and rubbed his back.

"You bet I did," Nix said, but he didn't sound too happy about it. "You kept saying my name, over and over in my ear. I don't think the others could hear it. The medic had gone for a stretcher, and Sink was back to planning to clobber Blue Forces. You were shaking so hard that I could barely hold onto you, and you just, uh, you just kept whispering my name in my ear, like I was the only thing in the world that mattered to you."

Dick closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the door. He really had made a display of himself, it seemed, and not just to the colonel. Why the hell had Nix stayed after that? He wanted to say he was sorry, but he needed to hear the extent of the damage first.

Nix continued, relentless. "The stretcher showed up, and I was able to pry you off of me, you'd mostly passed out by then, and I had to stay in the CP and keep up with the manoeuvrers. It didn't take us thirty minutes to outflank the hell out of Blue Forces. They ran right into us thinking they had the drop on you. It wasn't until the mop-up that Major Hancock finally briefed Sink on how Sobel had gone missing, and you'd taken over and evaded the enemy for two days in the dark, even though you were burning up and half dead from malaria the whole time, and then handed a battalion to Strayer on a platter. I don't think I've ever heard Sink swear like that."

"Is he going to drum me out?" Dick asked. He hadn't opened his eyes, and was sinking further down the door. There wasn't any part of this that sounded like it was going to end well for Dick. No wonder Nix had skimmed over the details the first time, when Dick had still been bedridden and shaky.

"What?" Nix's voice was so sharp and surprised that Dick opened his eyes to get a read on his expression. Nix was staring at him like he thought Dick had lost his mind. Well, that wasn't far out of line. "No, he's not drumming you out," Nix snapped. "He'd promote you if it wouldn't cause such a fuss with Sobel. The man was impressed down to his tiny brass heart, even if he said it was stupid of you not to have tapped out before you did. He said he couldn't afford to waste an officer like you on just an exercise."

"Oh," Dick said. That meant that Sobel would be just about ready to murder him, but at least he didn't have to worry about his career in the airborne. He remembered the doctor saying something about the controller now, from the first time he'd woken up. "Well, that's good."

"He was right about it being stupid," Nix snapped. Dick remembered that he'd been angry earlier too, and how Dick hadn't known why. His brain still felt like it was swimming up stream through molasses, and he was getting tired just from standing up for so long. "Jesus, Dick, what were you thinking?"

What had Dick been thinking? It all seemed like a blur looking back on it, and it hardly mattered now. "What happened then?" he asked.

"Strayer released me, and I went and found you in the field hospital. You were still shaking, and the doctor said you were burning up, and that you kept ripping your IVs out, and if they didn't get the drugs into you and your temperature down soon, you'd die." Nix swallowed and looked away. "I thought you were going to die. I took your hand—I was holding your arm down while the nurse tried to get the new line in—and your eyes snapped open and you looked me right in the eyes and said, 'Don't leave me, Lew,' then you stopped shaking, stopped moving at all. Christ, I thought that was it. But the doc said you were still ticking. He said you still had a chance." Nix took a long pull off his flask, and didn't say anything else for a long time.

"I'm sorry," Dick said, though he didn't know for what. Sorry for breaking the balance between them maybe? Sorry for worrying Nix. Sorry for almost dying.

"You were in and out for about a day and a half," Nix said, ignoring Dick's apology. "I ended up sitting with you because you kept calling for me, and I was afraid you'd say something in front of the nurse that she'd have to report to the MPs."

"Did I?" Dick asked, though he hadn't yet been hauled up in front of a court martial for sexual perversion, so it didn't seem likely that he had.

"Not to the nurse," Nix replied, and what he didn't say spoke volumes.

So Nix knew. He'd known for days, and he hadn't said anything before now. Dick supposed he'd been waiting for Dick to feel better before he pulled the pin and blew their friendship to hell. Though that wasn't fair, Nix hadn't done anything. In fact, he'd done his best to protect Dick through all this, though Dick realised that a wrong word from him could also have landed Nix in the same trouble by implication, so it might not have been entirely selfless on Nix's part. Dick's head ached again, and he rubbed at his temples. "I'm sorry," he said again, and at least this time he knew what he was apologising for. "I never planned to tell you. I wouldn't have done anything."

Nix laughed, a mocking sound, and for once it was at Dick's expense. "You know, I'd worked that out myself," he said. "Funny how you look back on something and see it in a whole different light. I spent a lot of time sitting next to you in that field hospital, and then on the train back to Breckinridge, and then in the hospital here, and I started to figure back about how you looked at me, and some of the things you'd said."

Hairpins dropped like breadcrumbs, all the way back to OCS, Dick realised, an easy enough trail for an intelligence officer to follow. Dick pushed off the door and stood up straight, his shoulders back. He'd woken that morning thinking it was over between them, and if it had to be over now, he'd face it like a man. "So what do you want to do about it?"

"Oh stand at ease," Nix snapped. "I'm not going to have you shot. You're my best friend for Christ's sake."

"Oh," Dick said, though he didn't stand easy. He still needed to know what was going to happen before he could. "All right."

"Though I'm..." Nix hesitated, and then gathered himself, stepping away from the bunks to stand in front of Dick. They were inches apart, and Dick could smell the whiskey on his breath. "I guess I'm pretty pissed off that you didn't say anything for fifteen fucking months."

"Really?" Dick asked. He wished he had an idea of where Nix was going with this. They'd had such an easy understanding before, but these past few weeks seemed to have shattered it. "You think that's the kind of thing you just up and tell a buddy?"

"Well, no," Nix admitted, "but if you'd told me, I would have done this a year ago, instead of now." He moved slowly—slow enough for Dick to see what was coming and avoid it if he wanted to—so it seemed to take an age for Nix to cup his hand around the back of Dick's neck and pull his head down almost close enough for their lips to meet.

Dick leaned down and closed the remaining gap. Nix's lips were soft and warm under his, and tasted of whiskey and smokes. Nix opened his mouth, breathing out a sigh of pure relief under Dick's touch, and let Dick set the pace. Dick didn't know what to do with his hands. He'd never fantasised about being the one to take the initiative, that had always been Nix in his dreams. They seemed to fit on Nix's belt, right above his hips, so he rested them there. That had been the right move; Nix leaned against Dick's chest and kissed back.

It could be that Dick was still delirious, possibly hallucinating. It could be that this was a dream, though their teeth kept knocking together, and Nix needed to slow the hell down, and it felt too imperfect to be a dream. Even if it wasn't real, Dick planned to keep up with it for as long as he could. As dreams went, this one was certainly better than the Battle of the Crater and General Grant screaming at him.

Nix's hand ruffled the back of Dick's hair, pulling him in closer, and they finally seemed to click and work out how they fit together, because Dick was able to kiss him until he couldn't breathe, or maybe until he just forgot that he had to.

"Wow," he said when he finally pulled away. His head was spinning, and his pounding heart made it ache all the more, but he wasn't sorry for a second of that kiss.

"Yeah," Nix agreed. He was looking up at Dick with wide eyes, like he couldn't believe what was happening, and Dick figured he must look about the same.

"A year ago?" Dick asked, remembering Nix's come on. "Really?"

"Give or take," Nix admitted, and to Dick's astonishment, he was blushing. "Figured a straight arrow like you wouldn't..."

"I definitely would," Dick said, cutting him off. "I thought you liked girls."

"I do like girls," Nix said, "but we should talk about this later." He glanced at his watch and noted with faux regret, "Oh, damn, we missed the 1000 to North Carolina."

Dick laughed and didn't let go of Nix's hips. Nix was right; they needed to stop. It wasn't safe to be doing any of this here, but he couldn't bring himself to let Nix go, not yet. It seemed right then like Dick needed to hold onto him to keep standing. "Still want to get breakfast?" he asked.

Nix shrugged, not moving away either. "I could eat," he said, and he looked at Dick with a familiar sparkle his eye that told Dick that he needed to cut him off before he picked which innuendo would shock Dick the most.

Dick shut him up with another kiss, which worked so well that he promised himself to do it whenever he had the chance.


End file.
